Local Area Network (LAN)

The geographical distribution of LAN is restricted to limited geographic coverage of a few kilometers only. The communication facilities which LAN typically provides are within a building or a campus. Some of the most common communications links used in LANs are twisted pair, coaxial cables and fiber optics. Ethernet is the most commonly used LAN technology because it is relatively fast and economical too. Token Ring and FDDI are also majorly used LANs. ARCNET is also most commonly installed LAN technology and is still sued in industrial automation industry.

The server used with LANs has applications and data storage that are shared by multiple computer users in common. A complete package of application programs are kept on LAN server. Any user(s) can share files with other with the help of LAN server read and write access is maintained by a LAN administrator. Users can share hardware devices also such as laser printers, scanners etc. 
With the help of LAN many participation systems can build a type of LAN which is temprory and they use it to join the multiplayer games.

To configure a local area network one can use specialized operating system software. ICS (Internet connection sharing) is one of the tools for Microsoft windows which provide a software package that supports controlled access to LAN resources.  When more than one LAN are be differentiated into logical groups then it is calles as subnet. Such as a type of A LAN is your internet protocol which is able to contain about 16 million systems devices which are mainly already organized in subnets.

The communication cost of LAN is usually much lower because of lower error rates, absence of routing algorithms, lower maintenance and administrative costs. The cost to transmit data in LAN is negligible because the transmission medium is usually owned by user organization. A LAN is owned by single organization because of its limited coverage. Also administrative and maintenance complexities and costs for LANs are usually lower than for WANs.
The transmission rates in LAN are usually much higher than WANs. LANs have transmission rates of 0.2 megabit per second to 1 Gigabit per second. Local area networks generally experience fewer data transmissions errors.
Recent Tags : About Local Area Network (LAN), Local Area Network (LAN) Details, What is Local Area Network (LAN) Knowledge of Local Area Network (LAN), Local Area Network (LAN)

Wide Area Network (WAN)

The geographical distribution of WAN spans greater distances and may extend over several thousand kilometers.It can operate nationwide or even worldwide. The computers and users in one location can communicate with other computers and users in other locations. Leased telecommunication lines, public communication systems such as telephone lines, fiber-optic cables, microwave links and satellite channels are used to links across regional, metropolitan, national or international boundaries and hence the overall communication cost of WAN is very high.Point-to-Point connection between two computers is used in WANs. The technologies used in WANs are SONET, ATM, MPLSand Frame Relay.The technology used for WAN is high speed and relatively expensive but it is most reliable and secure than Circuit switching or Packet Switching (Connection oriented).Sample protocols used for WANs are PPP,HDLC,SDLC,and HNAS.

The protocol used for a WAN is TCP/IPin combination with devices such as routers, switches, firewalls and modems.A wide area network may be privately owned or rented, but they are usually implemented with public (shared user) networks or an enterprise or a corporation or an organization which connects with several LANs.

At the end of each leased lines, a router connects the LAN on one side with a second router within the LAN on the other.The transmission rates in WANs usually range from 1200 bits per second to slightly over 1 Mbps. Nowadays, transmission rates are typically 2 Mbps, 34 Mbps, 45 Mbps, and 155 Mbps, 625 Mbps (or sometimes considerably more).More complex routing algorithms are used in WANs.

ARPANET (Advanced Research Projects Agency of U.S. Department of defense) was first WAN. International airlines worldwide link their computers to form a WAN that facilitates booking of flight tickets on international flights. Internet is world’s most popular WAN. Extranets and VPS based segments are also WANs in themselves.

A WAN is usually formed by interconnecting multiple LANs and other types of networks togethereach of which may belong to different organizations so that users and computers in one location can communicate with users and computers in other locations. Due to a large distance in WAN, the error transmission rates are higher than LANs.

Recent Tags : About Wide Area Network (WAN), Wide Area Network (WAN) Details, What is Wide Area Network (WAN) Knowledge of Wide Area Network (WAN), Wide Area Network (WAN)

Network Gateway

Network Gateways are the most sophisticated internetworking tools that are used for connecting dissimilar networks that use different communication protocols. The networks which are built on completely different communication architectures can be interconnected using gateways. The network which are disconnected by a gateway use different protocols and hence protocol conversion is major job performed by gateways.

A broadband router at home networks, typically serves as network gateway but ordinary computers can also be configured to perform same functions. A Gateway may be used to interconnect two networks one of which uses IP Suite and other uses SNA protocol suite.Gateways are also defined as router or proxy server that that perform routing functions between networks. Gateways are operating at any network layer and hence they are also referred as protocol converters.When an IP address of the node of computer network that network software uses does not match any other routes in routing table a default gateway is used.

The outside network (Internet) and internal networks are connected with gateways.

For any organization in a network, This gateway node of a computer system server may also be used as firewall server or a proxy server.
Network gateway is a type of internetworking which is also had ability to join two different networks along with each other and also both these network also shares different protocols.
A subnet mask defines The IP range of any private network is defined on subnet masks.

Any Client should sent IP packet along with its destined place which is not into the given subnet mask towards a network gateway, with in a particular IP network. Such as If any network had a subnet mask of 266.266.266.0 and its Ip is 192.168.1.72 then in such case the data moving towards this IP address outside to 192.168.1.72 will automatically be sent towards that private network gateway. On the other hand when the IP packet is being forwarded on to the other network, then at this situation the gateway either able to or not able to fulfills the translation of network address.

Recent Tags : About Network Gateway, Network Gateway Details, What is Network Gateway Knowledge of Network Gateway, Network Gateway

TCP/IP

TCP stands for Transmission control protocol and IP stands for Internet Protocol. It is the basic communication language or protocol of Internet. If the communication protocol is used as a private network then the protocol is used in Intranet or Extranet. To ensure reliability, ordered and error-checkeddelivery of data over a logical connection, TCP is used.This protocol is used at Transport Layerof Open System Interconnections (OSI) model.

Application programs send a large chunk of data across the Internet using IP. The software issues a single request to TCP and let TCP handle the IP details, instead of breaking the data into IP-sized pieces and issuing a series of IP requests.
The pieces of information which is exchanged are called packets. A packet is a sequence of bytes(octets) and consists of header followed by a body. The header describes the packets source address, destination address and control information. The body contains the data IP is transmitting.

IP(Internet Protocol) is connectionless protocol where no connection is required between sender and receiver to send any message. The message sending through IP may take adifferent route because each packet of message is transferred independently. This protocol is used at Network Layerof Open System Interconnections (OSI) model. X.25 Protocol is also a network layer protocol but is connection-oriented protocol. It is a lower layer of OSI model and handles the address part of each message packets so that it gets to right destination.In this protocol, a request for connection is first sent to destination. If the connection gets accepted the requesting party is given a connection identifier to use for further subsequent requests

Some of the higher layer Application protocols use TCP/IP to get to the Internet.World Wide Webs Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP), the File Transfer Protocol (FTP), Telnet (Telnet), Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP), POP3, IMAP, SSH use TCP/IP.
Recent Tags : About TCP/IP, TCP/IP Details, What is TCP/IP Knowledge of TCP/IP, TCP/IP

Types of Networking

When more than one are computers linked together and are used to share any type of information or resources or any files needs to exchange, a telecommunications network or data network is used.  With the help of telephone, radio waves, lines, satellites, etc computers of a network could be connected successfully. The example of best known computer network is Internet. We can send emails, photographs, videos, documents, files etc.

Networks are broadly classified into two categories: LAN (Local Area Network) and WANs (Wide Area Network).

Networks that share some characteristics of both LANs and WANs are referred as MANs(Metropolitan Area Networks).

The hardware device which allows a computer to be connected to network both as physically and functionally is called as NIC (Network Interface Cards) or Network Card. NIC is a printed circuit board and is installed on one of expansion slots of computer and provides a port on back of computer to which the network cable is being attached.

The term Network Topology refers how the nodes (two or more computers) of a network are linked together. The data path that may be used between any pair of nodes in network is also referred by Network Topologies.

Types of Network Topologies

Star Network
Ring Network
Completely Connected Network
Hybrid Network
•Multi Access Bus Network


To install a computer networks a combination of factors are keep in mind

a. Performance of the system.
b. Number of nodes and their geographical distribution (size) of the system.
c. Availability of lines of communication.
d. Expandability of system.
e. Calculating the combined cost of components and services required to establish a network.



Recent Tags : About Types of Networking, Types of Networking Details, What is Types of Networking Knowledge of Types of Networking, Types of Networking